Forum sits on the first floor of Sino Plaza in Causeway Bay. Three Michelin stars since 2020. Founded by a man who arrived from Guangdong at sixteen with fifty Hong Kong dollars, worked his way from cleaner to chef, spent three years learning to braise a single ingredient, and ended up serving it to Deng Xiaoping and the heads of state of a dozen countries.

First, The Orientation


This is not a restaurant with a beautiful origin story. It is the story itself.


The conventional approach to Forum Restaurant is to begin with the food: the Ah Yat braised abalone, the clay pot, the twelve-to-fourteen hours of braise, the Japanese dried abalone sourced from northern Japan that takes a full day to rehydrate before cooking can begin. This is accurate, and it is the reason three Michelin stars have been awarded since 2020 and maintained through 2026. But it explains the technique without explaining the man, and understanding the man is the only way to understand why the technique became what it is, and why a restaurant in a shopping mall in Causeway Bay became one of the most decorated Cantonese restaurants on earth.


Yeung Koon-yat was born in 1932 in Zhongshan, Guangdong province. The Sino-Japanese War killed his two younger sisters through starvation. In 1948, at the age of sixteen, he left for Hong Kong with fifty Hong Kong dollars — approximately six US dollars in contemporary exchange — and no contacts, no credentials, and no prospects beyond a conviction that Hong Kong offered something Guangdong did not. He got a job as a cleaner at a restaurant. He worked from eleven in the morning until one at night. He slept on tablecloths with the other staff. He made around thirty Hong Kong dollars a month. He watched the chefs, experimented in whatever time he found, and eventually moved into the kitchen. When he co-founded Forum Restaurant in 1974 — at age 42, with HK$600,000 scraped together with business partners — he was not a young visionary opening a restaurant from culinary passion. He was a man who had spent twenty-six years learning how a kitchen works, from the floor up.


The partners left, one by one, through the difficult early years. By 1977, when the restaurant was formally registered as a business, Yeung was the sole owner. He had a restaurant that was not distinguishing itself. He needed a reason for people to come. He chose abalone. It took him three years and the kind of investment — time, money, obsessive focus — that most rational businessmen would not have sanctioned. The result was a dish that outlasted him, and a restaurant that will be explained, at every table, by reference to the journey that produced it.

The Chef


Cleaner. Cook. Ambassador. The man who decided abalone would be his argument.


The choice of abalone was not obvious. In the 1970s, abalone was an expensive ingredient associated with luxury Cantonese dining but without a definitive preparation that had established a single restaurant's authority over it. Yeung chose it deliberately, for reasons that were simultaneously culinary and commercial: it was the food of kings, of businessmen, of intellectuals — it was good quality and healthy, he said — and he believed he could improve how it was traditionally prepared. He spent three years doing exactly that, studying Japanese preparation techniques, investing heavily in the process, and developing the Forum's specific method: Japanese dried abalone from northern Japan, soaked and dried for a full day, then braised in a clay pot on layers of bamboo shoots and spare ribs, with more bamboo shoots and chicken layered on top, cooked at high heat for twelve to fourteen hours. Readiness is tested by inserting a pin: the resistance tells the chef what no timer can.


The dish attracted Hong Kong officials. Officials brought dignitaries. Dignitaries brought reputation. In 1984, shipping magnate Yue-Kong Pao recommended Yeung's abalone to Deng Xiaoping, and Yeung was invited to cook at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing. Deng, after eating it, said it was the best abalone he had ever had. In 1988, Yeung cooked in Singapore for a three-day banquet serving more than a thousand meals. In 1995, he cooked for French President Jacques Chirac, who wrote a thank-you note — a copy of which Yeung kept in the restaurant and would read aloud to visitors. Chirac wrote that he had discovered aspects of Chinese gastronomy that had been unknown to him until that meal. Yeung kept the copy at hand.


"Abalone was the food of kings, of businessmen, of intellectuals. It's good quality and healthy. And I believed I could improve how it was traditionally prepared."

YEUNG KOON-YAT · FOUNDER, FORUM RESTAURANT


Yeung became a member of the Club des Chefs des Chefs — the invitation-only organisation of chefs who cook for heads of state, with gold medal status — the most direct possible institutional recognition that he had achieved what he set out to prove: that a self-taught Cantonese chef from Guangdong who arrived in Hong Kong with fifty dollars could reach the same tables as the most credentialled kitchens in the world. He won competitions across Asia and internationally, was recognised as a world master of culinary arts, and became what he had always wanted to be: an ambassador for Chinese cuisine at the level of global statecraft. He died on 31 July 2023, aged 90, three years after the restaurant he had built from a cleaner's wages earned its third Michelin star.


The Formation of Yeung Koon-yat, 楊貫一


  • (Zhongshan, 1932) Born in Guangdong province — Childhood through the Sino-Japanese War; two younger sisters die of starvation. Leaves for Hong Kong in 1948 at age sixteen with fifty Hong Kong dollars. The formation is not culinary — it is a formation in the value of persistence and the determination to reach a different outcome than the one the circumstances offered.


  • (Tai Wah, Kowloon) Entry-level worker, then kitchen staff —  Works from 11am to 1am, sleeps on tablecloths, makes HK$30 a month. Watches the chefs. Learns to cook by observation and experimentation rather than formal training. Eventually rises to marketing manager at another establishment. Twenty-six years of working in the Hong Kong restaurant industry before Forum opens.


  • (Forum, 1974-77) Co-founds Forum with HK$600,000; becomes sole owner by 1977 — Early years are a struggle. The restaurant does not stand out. Yeung decides he needs a signature dish — one ingredient, mastered completely, that cannot be equalled elsewhere. He chooses abalone. Three years of study and investment follow.


  • (Diaoyutai, 1984) Serves abalone to Deng Xiaoping at the state guesthouse in Beijing — The meal that transforms a successful Hong Kong restaurant into an internationally credentialled one. Deng's endorsement spreads through the networks of Chinese state and business at a speed that no marketing campaign could have produced.


  • (Paris, 1995) Cooks for President Jacques Chirac — The abalone is pan-seared with butter — Yeung's instinct for incorporating the host country's ingredients into the dish: "We can always incorporate local ingredients and cooking methods." Chirac's letter of thanks is kept at the restaurant. Yeung joins the Club des Chefs des Chefs with gold medal status.


  • (Forum, 2020-2023) Three Michelin stars awarded; Yeung dies at 90 — The stars arrive forty-six years after the restaurant opened. When the third star is announced, Executive Chef Adam Wong and the team go table to table to thank every guest dining that evening. Yeung Koon-yat dies in July 2023, having seen the validation he spent fifty years earning.
The Signature Dish


Dried. Soaked. Braised for fourteen hours. Tested with a pin.


The Ah Yat braised abalone — named for Yeung's nickname, Yat Gor, meaning Brother Yat — is not a difficult dish to describe but a difficult dish to replicate. The raw material is Japanese dried abalone sourced from northern Japan: Yoshihama abalone, considered among the finest available, prized for its texture, depth of flavour, and the specific quality of its body after the long braise. Dried abalone is not simply abalone that has been dehydrated; it is a transformed ingredient whose re-hydration, over a full day of soaking and drying cycles, is the first technical challenge of the preparation.


The braise takes place in a clay pot. The abalone is layered on bamboo shoots and spare ribs; more bamboo shoots and chicken are placed on top. The pot is sealed and cooked at high heat for twelve to fourteen hours. This is not a slow braise in the sense that European daubes or braises are slow — it is a long, high-heat cooking that develops the sauce through a sustained intensity unavailable to shorter methods. The test for readiness — a pin inserted into the abalone to gauge the resistance — is Yeung's own: it communicates the specific texture state of the meat in a way that cannot be read from colour or timing alone. The resulting abalone is described by diners consistently in the same terms: tender enough to cut easily with a knife, yet with what reviewers call a "sugary core" — a specific quality of firmness at the centre that confirms the ingredient was treated at the right duration and temperature. The sauce that pools beneath it has an intensity that multiple decades of refinement have made unmistakable.


Adam Wong, who has worked at Forum since 1992 and who Yeung designated as his culinary heir, describes having eaten more abalone than rice in his career at the restaurant. The quality of dried abalone changes with every season and every supplier; sustaining the Ah Yat standard requires constant testing of new product against the established flavour memory of the dish. There is no recipe that a new cook can read and execute. The dish exists as a piece of transmitted knowledge — Yeung to Wong, from the hands directly.


  1. Source — Japanese dried abalone from northern Japan. Yoshihama variety. Selected for texture, body, and the specific flavour profile that survives the long braise intact.
  2. Rehydrate — A full day of soaking and drying cycles. Not a simple soak — a repeated process of hydration and partial drying that begins to prepare the muscle for what the heat will complete.
  3. Braise — Clay pot, layered on bamboo shoots and spare ribs, topped with more bamboo and chicken. High heat, twelve to fourteen hours. The sauce develops through sustained intensity, not gentleness.
  4. Test — A pin, inserted. The resistance tells you what no timer can. The abalone is ready when the pin reads the precise texture state that Yeung's method demands — tender but with structure at the core.


The abalone can be ordered alone, or with additions: goose web, dried seafood, fish maw. The goose web — braised in the same sauce — is the classic accompaniment, its gelatinous texture providing a contrast to the abalone's firmer core. Diners who cannot commit to the full abalone at its full price can order braised mushroom and goose feet as an entry into the same braising tradition, at a fraction of the cost — the sauce is the same kitchen, applied to a different vehicle. This is not a lesser experience; it is the most direct way to understand what makes the braising method at Forum different from anywhere else.

THe Full MEnu


One restaurant that earns three stars with more than one dish.


The three Michelin stars at Forum are not awarded for abalone alone. The kitchen that Yeung built and that Adam Wong now helms is a full Cantonese kitchen whose range extends across dim sum, seafood, poultry, braised preparations, and fried rice — the last of these a dish that Yeung himself made tableside as a matter of routine, and that continues to be prepared to order with a precision that elevates what should be a simple preparation into something that regulars specifically travel for.


The Signature — Ah Yat Braised Abalone


Yoshihama dried abalone, rehydrated for a day, braised in a clay pot for twelve to fourteen hours on bamboo shoots and spare ribs. Served in its own sauce, which pools at the base with an intensity built over decades of refinement. The option to add goose web is the classic accompaniment. This is the dish. Order it.


The Fried Rice — Menu Structure


Rice cooked a day in advance for optimal texture, stir-fried in a clay pot with fresh prawns, dried scallops, char siu, and scrambled egg. Jinhua ham jus and scallion added off the heat. Tableside preparation. The dish Yeung made himself, at every table, for decades. Its simplicity is the argument: great Cantonese cooking does not require expensive ingredients to be extraordinary.


The Cantonese Classic — Deep-Fried Pork with Dried Mandarin Peel


Sweet and sour pork made with dried chenpi tangerine peel — a recipe passed down from Yeung's grandfather and one of the clearest demonstrations of the Cantonese tradition of preserving citrus peel for culinary use. The contrast of the sweet-sour sauce with the aged citrus bitterness is subtle and layered in a way that the standard preparation of the dish elsewhere is not.


The Seafood Course — Pan-Seated Leopard Coral Grouper


The premium fresh fish course that balances the long-braise dishes earlier in the meal. Leopard coral grouper — among the most prized live fish in Cantonese fine dining — pan-seared to a crisp skin with buttery flesh beneath, finished with aged soy and Shaoxing wine. The fish sourcing at Forum has involved direct relationships with fishmongers built over decades; the quality of the grouper reflects those relationships.


The Pre-Order Dish — Baked Stuffed Crab Shell


Minced crabmeat, onion, and cream baked inside a golden crab shell until the top is set and browned. One of the dishes the Michelin Guide specifically mentions alongside the abalone. Available on the regular menu, but the kitchen's preparation of it benefits from advance notice — mention it when booking if it is a priority.


The Pre-Order Essential — Stuffed & Roasted Chicken Wings


Chicken wings deboned and stuffed with minced shrimp, then roasted. A technically demanding preparation that requires advance ordering — the kitchen needs notice to prepare them. One of Forum's most celebrated dishes outside the abalone, and one that rewards guests who have done their research before arriving. Request these when you book.


The dim sum at Forum is among the finest in Causeway Bay. Guests who arrive for lunch will find har gow, siu mai, steamed and baked char siu buns, prawn rice rolls, and beef balls prepared with the same precision applied to the dinner menu — not diminished versions of dim sum produced as an afterthought, but serious preparations in their own right. For guests for whom the abalone is beyond the visit's budget, a dim sum lunch at Forum is the most cost-effective way to understand what the kitchen is doing at a level of technique that the three stars reflect.

THe Space


A mall address and a museum interior. The contrast is the point.


Forum is on the first floor of Sino Plaza, a commercial development on Gloucester Road in Causeway Bay. This address — a shopping centre, not a heritage building; a modern interior, not a historic ryotei — is one of the things that most frequently surprises first-time visitors, particularly those arriving from European fine dining contexts where three-star restaurants typically occupy purpose-built or historically significant spaces. The Forum's shopping mall address is not a concession to commerce. It is the result of a landlord decision made in 2013 that forced Yeung to vacate his long-standing Lockhart Road premises when the rent was doubled; he relocated to Sino Plaza and kept going. The restaurant has held three Michelin stars in this address since 2020.


The interior is designed as a series of rooms with contemporary Chinese decor: calligraphy, Chinese paintings, porcelain, and the accumulated recognitions of Yeung Koon-yat's career displayed on the walls. Awards, letters from heads of state, competition medals, photographs — the biography of the founder is the decoration, and it is more interesting than any designed aesthetic could be. The room is comfortable, the tables well-spaced, the ambiance described by reviewers consistently as luxurious yet friendly. It is a formal Chinese restaurant in the mode of great Cantonese fine dining — not minimal and austere, not theatrical and dramatic, but warm, confident, and decorated with the specific character of a kitchen that knows exactly who it is and does not need to explain itself through interior design.


The Walls Tell the Story


The dining room displays Yeung Koon-yat's lifetime of awards, competition medals, photographs with heads of state, and Chirac's letter of thanks. This is not conventional restaurant décor. It is the condensed biography of the man whose determination built the restaurant — and reading it before or during the meal changes what you understand about the food.


The Wine Cellar


Forum maintains an extensive wine list that showcases boutique wineries — a deliberate departure from the Hong Kong fine dining convention of offering primarily Bordeaux and Burgundy. The sommelier, Jacky, specialises in matching wines globally to the specific flavour profiles of Cantonese braised and steamed dishes. Pairing a wine with the Ah Yat abalone is a specific technical challenge; ask for guidance.


Adam Wong's Kitchen


Executive Chef Adam Wong Lung-to has been at Forum since 1992 — thirty-two years at the time of writing. He was designated Yeung's culinary heir and is the custodian of the abalone method. His kitchen also employs Head Chef Kwok Chi-wa, who joined in 1986, giving the kitchen a combined century of institutional knowledge from its most senior chefs alone.


One Restaurant. No Branches.


Yeung Koon-yat never opened a second branch of Forum in Hong Kong. "We have never opened a second branch. This does not only reflect our strict and ever-improving standard of quality, but also serves as a symbol of Mr Yeung Koon-yat's home, with a sense of belonging." There is a Forum Beijing, opened 2021 — but the Causeway Bay restaurant is, and has always been, the only one that counts.

Practical Information


Everything you need before the reservation.


  • Address: 1/F, Sino Plaza, 255–257 Gloucester Road, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong Island. The restaurant is on the first floor of the mall; the entrance is on Gloucester Road. Do not confuse with Forum Beijing (opened 2021) or any other establishment using the Ah Yat name.


  • Getting There: Causeway Bay MTR station (Island Line) is a five-minute walk. Exit A or D. The walk takes you through the heart of one of Hong Kong's most commercially dense neighbourhoods — shops, crowds, trams, the specific Hong Kong energy that makes the transition to the restaurant's interior feel like a decompression. Take the MTR. The cab from Central is not worth the traffic.


  • Reservations: Phone: +852 2869 8282. The restaurant does not operate an online booking system directly; reservations are taken by phone. For non-Cantonese speakers, the staff are accustomed to handling English-language reservations. Tables for weekend dinner service and festive periods (Lunar New Year, major holidays) should be booked weeks to months in advance. For special dishes that require advance preparation — the stuffed chicken wings, any large-format abalone service — mention your intentions when booking.


  • Service Hours: Lunch: 11:30 AM – 2:30 PM. Dinner: 6:00 PM – 11:00 PM. Open daily. Lunch service includes a full dim sum menu alongside the à la carte. Dinner is the better occasion for the full abalone experience — the kitchen's attention and the meal's pace are both better suited to an evening than a lunchtime visit, unless dim sum is the primary purpose.


  • Pricing: The Ah Yat braised abalone starts at approximately HK$1,380 for the mini claypot version with goose web (individual portion). Full-size abalone is priced per piece by weight and variety; expect HK$2,000–HK$5,000+ per person for a meal centred on abalone. Set menus are available from approximately HK$2,180 per person. Dim sum lunch for two without abalone can be managed for HK$600–HK$900. The restaurant is expensive at the top end and surprisingly accessible at the bottom; the braised mushroom and goose feet (approximately HK$380) is the entry point into the signature braising tradition.


  • Pre-Order Dishes: Several dishes require advance notice: the stuffed and roasted chicken wings (deboned and stuffed, requiring preparation time); certain large-format seafood preparations; and any abalone order above the standard claypot sizes. When making your reservation, inform the staff of any dish you specifically intend to order — this is standard practice at serious Cantonese restaurants and ensures availability and proper preparation timing.


  • Dress & Atmosphere: Smart casual to formal. Cantonese fine dining in Hong Kong does not enforce strict dress codes in the European sense, but the atmosphere at Forum is formal enough that arriving underdressed is noticeable. Business attire or its equivalent is appropriate. The restaurant is frequently used for business dinners, milestone celebrations, and family banquets — the ambiance reflects this and is warmer than it might sound.


  • Combining with Hong Kong: Causeway Bay is one of Hong Kong's most concentrated commercial and food districts. Before dinner: the cooked food stalls of the Causeway Bay typhoon shelter (dai pai dong) along the waterfront offer the democratic end of the same Cantonese food culture the restaurant represents at its pinnacle — the contrast of street wonton noodles and HK$1,380 claypot abalone, eaten in the same evening, is as good a description of Hong Kong's food culture as any. The trams along Gloucester Road are among the cheapest and most enjoyable public transport in Asia; ride the upper deck as far as Kennedy Town and back before dinner.
Things Worth Knowing Before You Go


The notes that belong in no other section


  • Order the braised mushroom and goose feet if abalone is beyond your budget — it is the same sauce — The Ah Yat abalone sauce is not reserved for the abalone. The braised mushroom and goose feet preparation, at approximately HK$380, uses the same braising method and the same sauce base as the signature dish. The gelatinous goose feet absorb the sauce in a way that makes it unmistakably the Forum kitchen. For guests who come primarily to understand what the three stars represent technically — rather than to eat abalone for its own sake — this is the most instructive and most cost-effective order on the menu.


  • Read the walls of the dining room when you arrive — before the food is ordered —  The awards, photographs, competition medals, and Chirac's letter of thanks displayed in the dining room are the biography of Yeung Koon-yat in condensed form. Understanding who he was — refugee from Guangdong, self-taught chef, gold medal member of the Club des Chefs des Chefs, the man who cooked for Deng Xiaoping and brought French butter to the abalone preparation in Paris — changes what you are eating. The food and the biography are the same argument. The walls are where one half of the argument is made. Read them.


  • Call ahead and pre-order the stuffed chicken wings and any large abalone — The stuffed and roasted chicken wings — deboned, filled with minced shrimp, roasted — require advance preparation and are not reliably available as a walk-in order. They are among the most celebrated dishes on the menu beyond the abalone. Calling when you reserve and specifying these dishes is standard practice at serious Hong Kong Cantonese restaurants; the staff will tell you what requires advance notice and what does not. Treating this like a European restaurant where everything is available off the menu as written is the most common way to arrive disappointed.


  • Ask for the Ah Yat fried rice — and watch it being made at the table — The Forum fried rice, prepared tableside in a clay pot, is the dish that Yeung Koon-yat made himself for guests throughout his career. Rice cooked a day in advance for optimal texture; prawns, dried scallops, char siu, scrambled egg; Jinhua ham jus off the heat. It is not expensive and it is not elaborate. It is a demonstration of what great Cantonese cooking is fundamentally about — the quality of the technique applied to the simplest materials. Watching the sous chef prepare it at your table is, in a meaningful sense, watching what fifty years of Forum teaching looks like when it arrives at the basic level.


  • Come for dim sum lunch if dinner is beyond your budget or booking window — The dim sum at Forum — har gow, siu mai, char siu bun, prawn rice roll, beef ball — is consistently rated among the finest in Causeway Bay, made with the same kitchen seriousness as the dinner menu. A dim sum lunch for two without the abalone is manageable in budget and much easier to book than a weekend dinner. For guests visiting Hong Kong and wanting to understand the Forum kitchen without the full three-star dinner commitment, a weekday dim sum lunch is the practical alternative.


  • Understand that the three stars represent something different from what they represent in France or Japan — The Michelin Guide Hong Kong edition has attracted consistent debate about its standards — some critics argue that the criteria applied in Hong Kong differ from those applied in Paris or Kyoto, and that the concentration of three-star Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong reflects the guide's adaptation to a local market as much as universal culinary excellence. This debate is worth knowing about before you arrive, so that you are evaluating Forum on its own terms rather than comparing it to European or Japanese three-star templates. On its own terms — Cantonese fine dining in Hong Kong, judged for what it is doing and why — Forum is an extraordinary restaurant. The argument that it should not have three stars is an argument about the Michelin Guide's methodology. The argument that the braised abalone is one of the finest things you can eat in Hong Kong is not contested by anyone who has eaten it with proper attention.


  • Adam Wong is the reason to come now, not just a placeholder for what Yeung was — Following the death of a founder as singular as Yeung Koon-yat, the obvious risk is that a restaurant becomes a monument — preserved but inert. Forum under Adam Wong is not inert. Wong joined the kitchen at twenty-three, spent over thirty years under Yeung's direct teaching, and has been carrying the restaurant forward since the founder's death in July 2023 with a combination of curatorial faithfulness to the signature dishes and genuine expansion of the menu's range. The three Michelin stars were held and confirmed through 2026. The kitchen is still alive. Come for what it is now, not only for what it was.


  • This is not the restaurant to visit if you want contemporary Cantonese innovation — it is the one to visit if you want to understand the tradition — Hong Kong has exceptional contemporary Cantonese restaurants that push the cuisine into new territory — new techniques, new pairings, new concepts. Forum is not doing that. Forum is doing the opposite: it is preserving, with complete seriousness and technical mastery, the Cantonese fine dining tradition that Yeung Koon-yat devoted fifty years to demonstrating was worth preserving. The stuffed chicken wings, the braised abalone, the fried rice, the sweet-sour pork with dried mandarin peel — these are not interpreted or deconstructed. They are made, correctly, at the highest level. Come knowing that this is what you are looking for, and it will be exactly what you receive.
Why This Restaurant


What Forum actually is


There is a category of three-star restaurant whose distinction is technical innovation — the kitchen that invents, that surprises, that produces something you have never tasted before. There is a second category whose distinction is aesthetic — the room, the sequence, the total designed experience. There is a third category, rarer and more demanding to understand than either, whose distinction is the story that produced it: the restaurant as the physical evidence of an improbable human life.


Forum is the third category, more completely than almost any restaurant in the world. The three Michelin stars are not the most interesting thing about it. The most interesting thing is that a man with fifty Hong Kong dollars and a job as a cleaner decided — over years of watching, learning, and persistence — that he was going to become the world's foremost authority on braised abalone, and then spent fifty years proving it. That he cooked for Deng Xiaoping and Jacques Chirac. That he earned gold medal status in the Club des Chefs des Chefs. That he never opened a second restaurant because this one was his home. That he died at ninety having seen his kitchen earn three stars.


Yeung Koon-yat never worried about his protégés turning into competitors. "Their achievement is also my success," he said. "Better than commercials." This is the philosophy of a man who understood that what he was building was not a restaurant brand — it was a tradition of craft, transmitted person to person, through decades of direct teaching. The abalone is the visible result. The transmission is what lasts.


The conversation about whether Forum's three stars reflect a global or a Hong Kong-specific standard is real and worth knowing about. It does not change what you eat when you sit down with the braised abalone in front of you: the dish that took three years and an entire career to build, served with a sauce that forty years of refinement have made singular, in a room where the walls tell you who made it and what it cost him to do so. That combination — the biography and the clay pot, the improbable origin and the unmistakable result — is what Forum actually is. And it is worth making the journey for.